#label maker

[scavengedluxury]

Sainsbury's stationery products, 1980. From the Sainsbury Archive.

[misforgotten2]

The last label one of these ever made read "TRASH BIN OF HISTORY".

Life - December 13, 1963

[luciaglitterx]

I love when random people hear things that only the friend group understands so they just think that we’re demented.

[executive-dysfunctioned]

ADHD is buying a label maker to organize everything but then spending 2 hours making labels for things that don't need labels like 'this is a spoon

[stone-cold-groove]

1001 uses... Personalize. Organize. Identify. Ad for the Dymo Home Labelmaker - 1963.

[ableut-astratanica]

The child's smart enough to recognize words and connect them to objects, which is really cute when we're talking about needing to refill the tape and they show us a roll of clear masking tape

...but they didn't catch we were talking about tape for the label maker, which is incredibly funny because that's a completely different type of tape

[cuprohastes]

Dymo Dystopia

OK so Dymo make label printers. They used to make these little reels of plastic tape that you could fit into a gun. You twist the dial to get the letter, and it punches it into the tape, which stretches and goes white, making white text on a coloured tape.

Then they started making label printers. The 450 and 550 are nearly identical. They use a heated print head and thermochromatic paper - It's receipt paper.

So no ink! The paper just needs heat - great for labels!

The 450 and 550 are nearly identical.

They have an optical reader inside, which reads and calibrates the roll of stickers using a pattern printed on the back. You can feed the labels out or in, cancel a print... and the rest is handled by software.

The 450 is discontinued. You can still buy them but Dymo won't sell you a new one, and frankly they'd rather like to say they're enot supported and push a driver update to kill them all.

Why?

The 550 has an RFID chip reader. All Dymo label rolls - Which ar enot cheap - have a chip hidden in the roll. If the chip isn't there, the printer will not work.

That's so you can't use generic labels with your Dymo that you paid for.

There's no option to shut that down, either. The work-around is to re-use the RFID chip and tape it to your generic rolls.

So if you need a label maker. Don't Buy Dymo™

[jjastigphoto]

cold night